If you find yourself driving through the open farmland of southwestern Minnesota, be prepared for a startling sight on the horizon — a massive bearded face topped with a red-striped hat that seems to rise out of nowhere.
Drive into the small town of Luverne and the full picture comes into focus: a nearly 66-foot-tall nutcracker, styled to look like Uncle Sam, standing proudly in the town center. And yes, its jaw actually moves.
Luverne already had a claim to fame as a town with more decorative nutcracker figurines than actual residents. Now it can add another title — home of the world’s tallest nutcracker.
Hundreds of people gathered outside a quirky rock shop in the heart of town for a weekend ribbon-cutting ceremony, where the giant figure’s name and precise height were officially announced. Afterward, the crowd was treated to red, white and blue cookies and slushies.
“Please welcome our newest Luverne resident, Verne the Patriot,” Katie Walgrave announced to a cheering crowd.
Walgrave confirmed the nutcracker stands 65 feet and 7 and a half inches tall, with a pedestal adding another 9 feet of height above the surrounding prairie. That makes it nearly double the size of a 33-foot nutcracker in Neuhausen, Germany, which Guinness World Records currently recognizes as the world’s largest.
Walgrave runs the rock shop, called Those Blasted Things, with her family. She said that since the giant nutcracker was finished in mid-June, the number of customers has quadrupled. Other businesses around town have also seen increased foot traffic.
“Our goal is to have something that’s different and that you won’t see anywhere else. And so that’s what we have here,” she said.
While nutcrackers are typically associated with the holiday season and Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet, the July unveiling fit right in for Luverne — a town that hosts a “Nutcracker Fest” every summer and treats the figurines as a year-round passion.
The town’s love affair with nutcrackers traces back to Betty Mann, now 96 years old, and a shopping trip she took to a Cracker Barrel in January 2001. She had recently lost both her daughter and her husband and was looking for a small comfort.
“I said to my daughter-in-law, ‘I had a hard Christmas and I’ve always wanted a wooden nutcracker. I’m buying myself a belated Christmas present,’” she recalled.
That first purchase at the Cracker Barrel gift shop was just the beginning. Mann kept buying nutcrackers until her collection grew to more than 2,500. In 2016, she donated the entire collection to the town’s historical society, where she served as president, hoping to bring more visitors to its museum.
Others followed her lead with donations of their own. Today, Luverne’s collection has grown to 7,554 nutcrackers — surpassing the town’s roughly 5,000 residents. No two are alike.
A few years back, the city brought in a tourism expert to help attract more visitors. His conclusion was straightforward. Mayor Patrick Baustian recalled the expert saying “we’re crazy if we don’t utilize the nutcracker collection.”
A city committee then came up with the idea of building the world’s tallest nutcracker. The timing also aligned with the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations. The project took several years to complete, with the individual pieces crafted in Utah and then assembled in Luverne. Just three weeks ago, a crane was used to lift the head and hat into place, finishing the structure.
The total cost came to around $600,000, funded through donations and grants, according to Walgrave.
Among those who made the trip to see Verne was John Hawkinson of Lakeville, Minnesota, who surprised his wife Francine with the nearly 200-mile journey after a house fire last month destroyed her collection of close to 300 nutcrackers. Many of those lost pieces held deep personal meaning — including one resembling a sailor to honor John’s time in the Navy, and a matching bride-and-groom set representing their marriage.
“Betty started her collection as a way of dealing with grief,” John Hawkinson said Saturday. “We came down here out of loss as well. … I thought that was kind of a full circle moment.”
Luverne sits about 30 miles from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and roughly 200 miles from Minneapolis. The town is also known as one of the settings featured in the second season of the TV series “Fargo.”
